Facebook hires head of chip development from Google

Facebook is clearly adamant on developing its own chips, so much so that the social media giant recently recruited Shahriar Rabii, one of Google's top microchip developer, into its ranks. Rabii previously worked at Google where he held a similar position leading the team in charge of building the chips that power its Pixel smartphones, specifically its custom Visual Core chip. At Facebook, he will be subordinate of Andrew Bosworth; Andrew is responsible for company's augmented reality and virtual reality program.

Over the past few years, Google has successfully captured some of the chip design professionals from Apple to develop its own processors, but the tables has turned and now Google has lost one of his talented professional to Facebook.

Facebook through Oculus virtual reality division is working on several future devices.

Besides Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Baidu have already embarked towards making their own hardware technologies. Later this year, the Mountain View, California-based search giant plans to release new Pixel phones with upgraded cameras and an edge-to-edge screen on the new larger model, Bloomberg News reported in May.

The move towards designing its own chips is part of a wider trend across the tech industry as device manufacturers look to break free from their reliance on chipmakers such as Intel and Qualcomm. Oculus VR used a Qualcomm chip in its standalone Oculus Go headset, so it may want to make itself independent of the chip-maker in later versions.

However, there could be an improvementof these devices in the future with the help of custom processors.

Considering what Facebook's business revolves around, it seems extremely likely that some of what the company is working on involves artificial intelligence.